Moreau turned away from his computer, sat back in the chair, and pillowed his head in his hands. "You're getting ahead of me, cowboy. I haven't asked any questions yet."

"I'm asking the questions. First and most obvious: What the hell are we doing here?"

"I'm about to tear you a new one for your insubordination," answered Moreau. "After that, we can order ice cream."

Hansen spaced his words for effect: "You know what I mean."

"Mr. Hansen, we are in the middle of an operation to bring in a rogue agent. You didn't get the memo?"

"Don't give me that BS. Geeks forgot to pack the goggles? Now we got a tail?"

"What're you suggesting?"

"You don't want us to capture Fisher."

"That's ridiculous."

"He's working with Grim. He's up to something. And we're running defense. We're the screen. And Kovac's beginning to figure that out, and he's got people all over us."

"Your job is not to stand and speculate on what-ifs and maybes and, Oh, I think I got this all figured out with my MIT education. Your job is to bring me Sam Fisher's head." Moreau leapt to his feet and raised his voice. "Jesus Christ, cowboy! What part of that equation don't you understand?"

"The part where you lied to us."

Hansen took a step forward and riveted his gaze on Moreau.

Standoff.

19

PARKING GARAGE REIMS, FRANCE

WHILEHansen was meeting with Moreau, Noboru was already three blocks down the street and heading toward the garage where the Range Rover was parked. The others thought he'd gone down to a little all-night cafe on the corner to bring back some fresh-brewed decaf.

With a woolen cap pulled tightly over his head and the collar of his trench coat turned up, Noboru entered the five- level parking garage and kept low behind the first row of cars. The attendant booth was empty, tickets and payment being issued by an automatic system.

Noboru stole his way up to the first level, eyes probing with an almost mechanical precision. He dashed from car to car and ventured up to the second level, squinting once more at every dark vehicle he spotted.

By the time he reached the third level, he was growing frustrated and breathless. There were plenty of open parking spaces within the garage, yet the Range Rover was not there.

Again, no luck on the fourth level. In fact, there were even fewer cars parked this high up.

He took himself all the way to the edge of a wall beside which stood the rooftop parking area. If the Rover had been parked there, Moreau would have picked it up via satellite. Noboru checked the lot anyway. No Range Rover.

He began to panic. Wrong garage? Had the car pulled out while he'd been on his way there?

Sweating profusely now, he sprinted all the way down to the first level and once more took up a position behind a small sedan.

And then he saw it, a bank of garage doors located along the rear wall of the garage. A sign indicated that these were secured garages for rent.

Fool!He'd missed that the first time around.

The bad news: There were six garage doors, and the Range Rover could be behind any one of them.

Noboru had tools but not much time.

He reached the first door, then opened his coat, removed his lock-picking set, and used one of the handles to open up a small gap in the first door, where the rubber base met the concrete floor. Through that gap he inserted the end of a flexicam, activated the base unit, set it for night vision, and slid the probe up to examine the car. No car. Empty garage.

On to the next one.

A Renault. And the next one. Empty. And as he was about to check the next one, headlights flashed behind him. He dove for cover beside the nearest car and waited there.

What the hell? It was the black Range Rover.

No. He blinked hard. It was a black SUV but not a Range Rover.

Noboru swallowed. Tried to calm himself. The SUV pulled into a spot near the exit, and a young couple exited, giggling. The man grabbed his partner's ass as they ventured across the street, toward a row of small hotels.

Back to work.

And as fate, luck, and a cruel and merciless universe would have it, Noboru had to check all six garages before finding the Range Rover parked inside the last one.

The doors were opened by remote control, with rolling codes, and Noboru waited while his CBT Code-Scan, a Third Echelon-engineered magic box, got to work. It took another five minutes for the CBT to cast its spell, and the door finally cycled open. Noboru entered, then shut the door behind him.

He flicked on his penlight and took a deep breath. Picking the lock on the Range Rover still wouldn't disable the vehicle's alarm system, but if you had a key fob--or a device that could precisely mimic one, like the CBT--then you could simply press a button, resynchronize the forty-bit random codes, and gain access. Noboru understood that the device would reprogram the car to allow him entrance, and then, quite remarkably, return the car to its original codes so its owner would be none the wiser.

After a few seconds, the CBT's LED screen flashed, the car chirped, and the locks opened. Noboru immediately searched the glove box for a rental-car agreement and found it. The name on the papers was an alias breathtakingly familiar to him.

Horatio and Gothwhiler were in France. After him. No doubts.

Noboru activated his OPSAT and opened a channel directly to Grim, who answered after a few moments. "Uh, what is it, Nathan?"

"My old friends are here."

A few seconds of nothing, then, "I understand."

"You made a promise."

"I know."

"How'd they find me?"

"I don't know. We can't talk about it now."

"I need to do something."

"Leave that to me."

He paused. "I'm sorry, but I don't trust you anymore."

"You have to. If you do something, you could compromise your mission."

"I'll plant a V-TRAC and route the signal to you. If you don't take care of this soon, I'll have to do it--even if it costs me my job."

"I understand. But you need to trust me. Okay?"

Noboru shook his head. "Take care of the problem. Good-bye, Grim."

After planting the V-TRAC device well up inside the Range Rover's body, Noboru left the parking garage, hustled back to the coffee shop, and returned to the room with five tall cups of decaf.

"Where the hell were you?" asked Valentina.

"One of the coffee machines broke, and I helped the lady fix it. She gave me the decaf for free." He forced a grin, and he thought his cheeks would crack off.

Hansen accepted his coffee and said, "Was the Range Rover there?"

"Uh, what do you mean?"

Hansen's tone grew harder. "Yes? Or no?"

Noboru opened his mouth, thought better of lying, and then suddenly said, "We'll be tracking it."

"Any idea who they are?"

Noboru braced himself. This time he would have to lie. "Not sure who they are."

"Kovac's people, no doubt. All right." Hansen faced the others. "Moreau's a tough nut to crack, but here's what I got out of him. For all intents and purposes, Kovac wants Fisher dead. And he's pressing Grim hard to make it happen. Grim, of course, would like to talk to Sam before we put a bullet in his head. You don't shoot your best friend for no reason. So if we ever catch up to him, my plan is to capture first. Moreau swears to me that they're not lying about this, but to suggest that Fisher is just on the run in France with no agenda is ridiculous. He's up to something, and we're going to find out what."